Forever staring and waiting for the sunrise of each day, is the body of a 240 foot lion adorned with a Pharaoh's head that reaches 66 feet over the floor of the Giza Plateau. Carved from limestone bedrock and easily the most recognizable stone carving that has ever been created, it sits in its own enclosure facing due East with the Great Pyramid behind it in the North. The Sphinx has been buried up to it's neck in sand for more than half of it's known life, apparently having been rescued from the ever shifting sands of the Sahara on a number of occasions. As recently as as the nineteenth century this majestic scultpture has been hidden away by the sands of time as some of the earlist known photographs attest.

The Sphinx is believed to have been commissioned by the Pharaoh Khafre, the supposed builder of the second Pyramid which sits directly behind it. Khafre was the successor of Khufu, the pharaoh credited with building the  Great Pyramid, the largest stone structure ever known to be built and the only surviving monument stated to be one of the seven wonders of the world. Khafre was also the predecessor of Menkaure, the alleged builder of the third and smallest Pyramid of the three.

The Sphinx and the Egyptologist's Evidence

The Egyptologists definitive claim that Khafre had the Sphinx built is based on some really interesting conclusions that many think are seriously flawed.

The first is the obvious placement of the Sphinx directly in front of the Pyramid attributed to Khafre. That is based on the assumption that Khafre built the Pyramid that sits behind it in the first place and that in itself is quite a leap. Even if we give them the fact that Khafre may have been the builder of the Pyramid behind it, it is still  rather large leap of faith to arrive at the conclusion that such proximity means that he built both the pyramid and the Sphinx.

Egyptologists claim as additional evidence that the face of the Pharaoh depicted is the face of Khafre. This conclusion is drawn based on comparison to a life-size statue that now sits in the Cairo Museum which is said to belong to Khafre. In 1993 a group of independent researchers commissioned a New York police detective and senior forensic artist who had been working with facial identification for more than 20 years, to compare the face of the statue in the museum with the face of the Sphinx. Offering the angular measurements that he uses as the tools of his trade as evidence, he determined that they were not the same face.

Having measured the degree of angle from the outer corner of the mouth to the outer corner of the eye, the detective found an18 degree difference. The Pharaoh depicted on the Sphinx has a jutting jaw that angles to 32 degrees off the vertical, and the statue said to depict Khafre angles to only 14 degrees off the vertical. Another aspect of facial attributes is the shape of the diameter of the face from the front. The statue of Khafre, complete with headdress, at the Cairo Museum has an oval face, the Sphinx has more of a square shaped face. Also the mouth and the eyes of the Sphinx are larger proportionally than the mouth and eyes of the statue of Khafre. The two faces were not of the same person.

The Sphinx and Inventory Stela

Between the front paws of the Sphinx is a granite stela which was erected in commemoration of a renovation campaign carried out by Pharaoh Thuthmosis IV (1401 BC - 1391 BC). It contains the single syllable 'Khaf', which the Egyptologists immediately claimed was proof that Khafre was the builder of the Sphinx. The Stela was discovered in 1817 and was already badly damaged. Even though the portion of the Stela containing the glyph 'Khaf' has now completely flaked away, there isn't any reason to doubt that it actually appeared on the stela at the time of it's excavation, as this appears to have been well documented.

The stela was inscribed with hieroglyphs which had to be translated to English. One extremely important fact that is impossible to ignore, unless of course you are an Egyptologist it would seem, is the fact that every literally inscription that represented the name of a Pharaoh was contained in a cartouche. A cartouche is an oval-shaped object that framed the inscribed hieroglyphs which spelled out the name of the Pharaoh. Not one single exception has ever been found - except it would seem on this Stela, which seems rather strange to say the least. 

Thuthmosis IV lived 1,000 years after Khafre, which is a long time for knowledge as to the sphinxes origins to have survived orally - especially as it was already buried benath the sands, but this is what egyptologists assume happened, as there have been no texts or inscriptions discovered that would account for Thuthmosis thinking that Khafre had built the Sphinx. On that basis So even if the Stela did refer to Khafre as the builder, how can we be sure that wasn't an assumption on Thuthmosis part? 

Furthermore, another important stela known as the 'Inventory Stela', uncovered at Giza and believed to be contemporary to the era, states that the Pharaoh Khufu saw the Sphinx. Khufu was Khafre's predecessor, and Pharaohs reigned for life, meaning that it would make it impossible for Khafre to build it and Khufu to see it.

Egyptologists view the 'Inventory Stela' as a 26th Dynasty fake designed to give more credibility to the emerging Isis cult, many 'fringe' researchers say that the establishment are simply dismissing anything that contradicts them.

a translation of the inventory Stela in Riddles of the Sphinx by Paul Jordan is as follows;

"Long live ... the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Khufu, given life ...He found the House of Isis, Mistress of the Pyramid, by the side of the hollow of Hwran (the Sphinx) ... and he built his pyramid beside the temple of this goddess and he built a pyramid for the King's daughter Henutsen beside this temple. The place of Hwran Horemakhet is on the south side of the House of Isis, Mistress of the Pyramid ... He restored the statue, all covered in painting, of the Guardian of the Atmosphere, who guides the winds with his gaze. He replaced the back part of the nemes head-dress which was missing with gilded stone ... The figure of this god, cut in stone, is solid and will last to eternity, keeping its face looking always to the east ..."

In truth there is little solid evidence to validate any part of mainstream archaeologys timelines concerning the Sphinx or the Pyramids themselves. Author William Fix puts many peoples thoughts into words when he says;

"In terms of solid evidence, we know absolutely nothing about the times in which Khufu lived nor is there clear evidence of any kind to support the dating of the Great Pyramid and the Fourth Dynasty at 2700BC. That dating is only a convention, an agreed-upon estimate - more simply, only a guess. And because we are left with nothing from the reign of Khufu except a few symbols which have been translated as Khufu and Khnum-Khuf, we know virtually nothing of Khufu either.

In searching for Khufu, after centuries of exploration all that has been found that can be considered contemporaneous with him are those few cartouches translated as Khufu, Souphis, or Khnum-Khuf. There is nothing else.

In terms of direct and solid evidence, the association of Khufu with the Great Pyramid rests entirely on the apparently straightforward fact that there are cartouches reading "Khufu" painted on the walls of hidden chambers inside the building.

These marks are the only inscriptions or writing of any kind inside the Pyramid and constitute the only hard evidence for attributing the Great Pyramid to a "king" called Khufu. In terms of direct evidence, the entire case linking the Great Pyramid with Khufu comes down to these few cartouches."

One more interesting aspect of the Sphinx  is that although it is less obvious from the front, it is quite apparent when it is viewed in profile that in terms of proportion the head is way too small for the body. It would be easy to blame the enormity of the carving for this, but if the Pyramids were built, and this is key, and the Sphinx as we see it today, at the same time, the craftsmanship of the Sphinx seems less than should be expected. If however the Sphinx was uncovered, from the desert  sands in the fourth dynasty and the Sphinx's head recarved by Khafre into the head of a Pharaoh, complete with headdress at that time, that would explain why Khafre's name appeared on the afore mentioned stela, if indeed it really does. That would give some credance to the Egyptologists belief that it is the face of Khafre. However others still doubt this because it doesn't look like the statue of Khafre in the Cairo Museum, and the 'Khaf' isn't in a cartouche as it must be.

Conclusion

Exactlty where the Sphinx sits on the timeline in relation to the Pyramids needs to be based on more than just the assumption that archaeologists have been accurate in their assessments of when the Pyramids themselves were built. The archaeologiical cominity needs to provide evidence that demonstrates that the same builders constructed both monuments, as yet they have failed to do so. The inscriptions on the Sphinx stela do not match other historical inscriptions without the cartouche, and proclaiming the 'Inventory Stela' to be a fake simply because it punches a hole in their conclusions is manipulating the evidence to support their version of history rather than collecting evidence to find the truth.